Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors

“You see how it is, Staines; they don’t want to slack up speed. We’ll get to Rawlins’ in time for breakfast at this rate,” and again Staines was silent. Presently the team began the ascent of a rolling wave of foothill, around which the roadway twisted as only Arizona roadways can, and at the crest the driver reined in to give his mules a “breather.” Staines leaped from the ambulance for a stretch. The troopers promptly dismounted and loosened saddle girths.

“Yonder is the mouth of the Canyon, sir,” said the sergeant, pointing to a rift in the range to the south, now gorgeously lighted up by the morning sunshine.

“How long is the defile, sergeant?”

“Not more than four miles, sir – that is, the Canyon itself – but it is crooked as a ram’s horn, and the approach on the other side is a long, winding valley.”

“When were you there last?” asked Staines.

“About six months ago, just after Dins-more was murdered.”

Staines turned quickly away and strolled back a few yards along the road.

“You knew Dinsmore, then?” asked the paymaster.

“I knew him well, sir. We had served together during the war. They said he fell in love with a pretty Mexican girl at Tucson, and she would not listen to him. Some of the men heard that she was a daughter of old Pedro who keeps that ranch, and that it was hoping to see her that he went there.”

“I know. I remember hearing about it all then,” said the paymaster. “Did you ever see anything of the man who was said to have killed him?”

“Sonora Bill? No, sir; and I don’t know anyone who ever did. He was always spoken of as the chief of a gang of cutthroats and stage robbers down around Tucson. They used to masquerade as Apaches sometimes – that’s the way they were never caught. The time they robbed Colonel Wood and killed his clerk ‘I’ troop was scouting not ten miles away, and blessed if some of the very gang didn’t gallop to Lieutenant Breese and swear the Apaches had attacked their camp here in Canyon del Muerto, so that when the lieutenant was wanted to chase the thieves his troop couldn’t be found anywhere – he was ‘way up here hunting for Apaches in the Maricopa range. The queer thing about that gang was that they always knew just when a paymaster’s outfit or a Government officer with funds would be along. It was those fellows that robbed Major Rounds, the quartermaster, and jumped the stage when Lieutenant Spaulding and his wife were aboard. She had beautiful diamonds that they were after, but the lieutenant fooled them – he had them sent by express two days afterward.”

Mr. Staines came back toward the ambulance at this moment, took a field glass from its case, and retraced his steps along the road some twenty yards. Here he adjusted the glass and looked long toward the northeast.

“All ready to start, sir,” said the driver.

The major swung himself up to his seat; the troopers quietly “sinched” their saddles and mounted, and still the clerk stood there absorbed.

“Come, Staines!” shouted the paymaster, impatiently, “we’re waiting for you.” And still he did not move. The sergeant whirled his horse about and clattered back to where he stood.

“Come, sir, the major’s waiting.” Staines turned abruptly and, silent as ever, hurried to the wagon.

“What were you staring at so long?” said the paymaster, pettishly, as his assistant clambered in. “I shouted two or three times.”

Staines’ face was pale, yet there were drops of sweat upon his brow.

“I thought I saw a party of horsemen out there on the flats.”

“The devil!” said the paymaster, with sudden interest. “Where? Let me look.”

“You can’t see now, sir. Even the dust cloud is gone. They are behind that low ridge some eight or ten miles out there in the valley.”

“Go on, driver, it’s only cattle from the ranch or something of that kind. I didn’t know, by the way you looked and spoke, but that it might be some of Sonora Bill’s gang.”

“Hardly, sir; they haven’t been heard of for a year, and once away from Pedro’s we are safe enough anyhow.”

Half an hour later the four-mule team was winding slowly up a rocky path. On both sides the heights were steep, covered with a thick undergrowth of scrub oak and juniper. Here and there rocky cliffs jutted out from the hillside and stood like sentinels along the way. The sergeant, with one trooper, rode some distance ahead, their carbines “advanced” and ready for use, for Edwards was an old campaigner, and, though he thought it far from probable that any outlaws would be fools enough to attempt to “get away with” a paymaster’s bank when he and his five men were the guardians and Captain Rawlins with his whole troop was but a short distance away, he had learned the lesson of precaution. Major Sherrick, with his iron safe under his own seat, grasped a rifle in both hands. The driver was whistling softly to himself and glancing attentively ahead, for there was a continuous outcrop of boulders all along the road. The remaining troopers, four in number, rode close behind or alongside the wagon.

Presently they reached a point where, after turning a precipitous ledge of rock, glistening in the morning sunshine, they saw before them a somewhat steep incline. Here, without a word, Staines swung lightly from the vehicle and trudged for a moment alongside; then he stooped to adjust his boot lace, and when Sherrick looked back the clerk was coming jauntily after them, only a dozen paces in rear. In this order they pushed ahead perhaps a hundred yards farther, moving slowly up the defile, and Staines could easily have regained his distance, but for some reason failed to do so. Suddenly, and for no apparent cause, Jenny and her mate shied violently, swerved completely around and were tangled up with the wheel team before the driver could use the lash. Even his ready blasphemy failed to straighten things out.

“Look out for those rocks up there on the right!” he shouted. “Grab their heads, Billy!”

Even as he spoke the rocky walls of the Canyon resounded with the crash of a score of firearms. The driver, with a convulsive gasp, toppled forward out of his seat, his hand still clinching the reins. One of the troopers clapped his hand to his forehead, his reins falling useless upon his horse’s neck, and reeled in the saddle as his charger whirled about and rushed, snorting with fright, down the narrow road. At the instant of the firing the sound of a dozen “spats” told where the leaden missiles had torn through the stiff canvas cover of the ambulance; and Sherrick, with blanched face, leaped from the riddled vehicle and plunged heavily forward upon his hands and knees. Two of the troopers sprang from their saddles, and, crouching behind a boulder across the road, opened fire up the opposite hillside. The sergeant and his comrade, bending low over their horses’ necks, came thundering back down the Canyon, just in time to see the mules whirl about so suddenly as to throw the ambulance on its side. The iron safe was hurled into the shallow ditch; the wagon bed dragged across the prostrate form of the paymaster, rolling him over and over half a dozen times, and then, with a wreck of canvas, splinters, chains and traces clattering at their heels, the four mules went rattling away down the gorge.

“Jump for shelter, men!” shouted Sergeant Edwards, as he dragged the senseless form of the major under the great ledge to the right. “Stand them off as long as you can! Come out of your holes, you cowardly hounds!” he roared, shaking his fist at the smoke-wreathed rocks up the heights. “Come out and fight fair! There’s only five of us left!”

Here in the road lay the major, bleeding from cuts and bruises, with every breath knocked out of his battered body; yonder, his hands ‘clinched in the death agony, the stiffening form of the driver – plucky to the last. Twenty yards away down the road, all in a heap, lay one poor soldier shot through the head, and now past praying for. One of the others was bleeding from a gash along the cheek where a bullet had zipped its way, and Edwards shouted in vain for Staines to join them; the clerk had disappeared. For full five minutes the desperate combat was maintained; the sergeant and his little squad crouching behind the nearest rocks and firing whenever head or sombrero showed itself along the heights. Then came shots from the rear, and another poor fellow was laid low, and Edwards realized, to his despair, that the bandits were on every side, and the result only a question of time.

And then – then, there came a thunder of hoof beats, a storm of ringing cheers, a rush and whirl of panting, foaming steeds and a score of sunburnt, stalwart troopers racing in the lead of a tall young soldier, whose voice rang clear above the tumult: “Dismount! Up the rocks, men! Lively now!” And, springing from his own steed, leaping catlike from rock to rock, Phil Adriance went tearing up the heights, his soldiers at his heels. Edwards and his unwounded men seized and held the trembling horses; Sherrick feebly crawled to his precious safe and fell across it, his arms clasping about his iron charge. For five minutes more there was a clamor of shots and shouts, once in a while a wild Mexican shriek for mercy, all the tumult gradually receding in the distance, and at last – silence. Then two men came down the bluffs, half bearing between them the limp form of their young leader. The lieutenant was shot through both thighs and was faint from loss of blood.

“Has no one a little whiskey?” asked Corporal Watts.

“Here you are” was the answer. And Mr. Staines, with very white face, stepped down from behind the ledge and held out his flask.

A week later the lieutenant lay convalescing at Rawlins’ camp. A vigorous constitution and the healthful, bracing, open-air life he had led for several years, either in the saddle or tramping over the mountains, had enabled him to triumph speedily over such minor ills as flesh wounds, even though the loss of blood had been very great. The young soldier was soon able to give full particulars of his chase, and to one man alone, Rawlins, the secret of its inspiration.

Most important had been the results. It was evident to everyone who examined the ground – and Rawlins had scoured the range with one platoon of his troop that very afternoon after the fight, while his lieutenant, Mr. Lane, was chasing the fugitives with another – that a band of at least twenty outlaws had been concealed among the rocks of Canyon del Muerto for two or three days, evidently for the purpose of waylaying the escort of the paymaster when he came along. Their horses had been concealed half a mile away in a deep ravine, and it was in trying to escape to them that they had sustained their losses. Five of their number were shot down in full flight by Adri-ance’s men, and, could they have caught the others, no quarter would have been given, for the men were infuriated by the sight of the havoc the robbers had wrought, and by the shooting of their favorite officer.

No papers had been found on the bodies; nothing, in fact, to identify them with any band. All, with one exception, were Mexicans; he was a white man whom none of the troopers could identify, though Corporal Watts, of Troop B, declared he had seen him at “Cutthroat Crossing” the last time he went through there on escort duty. The others, whoever they were, rode in a body until they got around the range to the southward, then seemed to scatter over the face of the earth. Some odd things had transpired, over which Rawlins pondered not a little. It was Corporal Watts who brought to his camp at 11 o’clock the news of the desperate attempt to murder and rob the paymaster, and as they rode back together the corporal gave the captain such information as lay in his power. Lieutenant Adriance had “routed out” the detachment just at daybreak, when it was still dark, and saddling with the utmost haste had led away across country for the canyon, leaving the pack mules and a small guard at camp. “We rode like the wind,” said Watts, “after the first few miles, and every man seemed to know just what to expect when at last we struck the road and saw the trail of the ambulance and escort. We got there just in the nick of time.”

When Sherrick – who though severely battered and bruised had no bones broken – was able to talk at all, he never could say enough in praise of Adriance and his men; but what he wanted to know was how they came to learn of the threatened danger. Captain Rawlins protested that it was “past finding out.” The major questioned the men, but without success, and as for Staines, it was remarked that his pertinacity in cross-examination was simply wonderful. For some reason, however, the men of B troop did not like the fellow and would have little to do with him. But up to the time that Major Sherrick was able to push ahead for Tucson it is certain that he had discovered nothing as to the source of the lieutenant’s information; neither had they heard of Leon Ruiz, the night messenger. Staines opined that he must have been intercepted by the bandits, perhaps killed by them, when it was found that he was the bearer of a message to Captain Rawlins. After a brief chat with the lieutenant himself, one which the doctor did not interdict, the old troop commander sent a trusty sergeant with six men to scout the neighborhood of the rancho.

Lieutenant Lane was detached to take command of Adriance’s troop, which was sent on its way forthwith, leaving the gloomy rancho alone to sentinel the Gila crossing. But the moment Sherrick and his silent clerk drove on toward Tucson the old captain said a few words of farewell to the invalid, left him in the doctor’s charge and rode away northward on the trail of his sergeant. That night he rapped for admission and ordered supper at Rancho Ruiz, while his men, strolling about the premises, took careful note of the three or four scowling “greasers” who infested the corral.

Adriance was sitting up and beginning to hobble around when Rawlins returned to camp during the week that followed, and was all eagerness to hear what tidings the captain had to tell. But Rawlins had little to say; he had seen Pedro and had had one glimpse of Senora Dolores, but not so much as a word with the senorita; she was kept carefully concealed. Within the month Adriance was quite well enough to travel to his station, but refused. He would remain here, he said, until able to relieve Lane of the command of his troop and continue the scouting work. He did not wish to go to the fort. Sherrick and his clerk had come back in the course of a fortnight, and Mr. Staines asked to see Lieutenant Adriance, but that gentleman refused – a matter which caused the clerk to “bite his lips and look queer,” reported the soldier who took the message, but he said nothing at all.

Ten days afterward a Prescott paper mentioned the fact that Mr. Albert G. Staines, so long and favorably known in this Territory, had dropped in to look over valuable mining properties in the Big Bug and Hassayampa districts; and this Rawlins silently showed to Adriance.

“Then you may be sure he’ll come down to the rancho, and in less than no time,” said Adriance, “and I must go.” Rawlins made no reply at first, then he rose and nervously paced the floor a moment and turned upon his junior.

“Philip, I say no!”

The color mounted to the lieutenant’s

“Why not?”

“Ask yourself; ask your conscience, Adriance. You have told her that he, Staines, was a liar. You have virtually told her that you were engaged to no woman. You have inspired a sentiment, perhaps a passion, in that young girl’s heart, and you’re going there to defend her – a thing that I can do much better than you, now that you are a cripple. Then, think, my boy, I have known you six years; I have never known you to say or do a mean or unmanly thing. I’m an old fogy – an old fool perhaps – but I like to think most women pure and some men honest. You are one of them, Phil.” There was a moment’s silence.

“And yet you think I mean her harm.”

“Not yet, Philip, but would you marry that old scoundrel’s daughter?”

Adriance had no answer.

“Philip, if you look into that girl’s eyes again, unless it be to ask her to be your wife, I shall lose my faith in manly honor.”

Two days afterward Rawlins rode away on duty. A strange unrest had possessed the lieutenant since that brief talk with this old Puritan of a captain. Not another word had been said upon the subject, but every syllable that Rawlins spoke had struck home. Adriance respected and honored the grim, duty-loving troop commander whom some of the youngsters openly laughed at and referred to as “Praise the Lord Barebones” and “Captain Roundhead,” but the lieutenant well knew that no braver soldier, no “squar-er” captain drew sabre in the whole regiment than this faithful friend, who had long since singled him out for many an unusual kindness. He knew more – that in his high standard of honor and rectitude old Rawlins had said nothing which was not just and true.

Adriance knew well that he ought not to again seek that young girl’s presence, and the blood rushed hotly to his cheek as he recalled the kiss his eager lips had stolen. Marry that old scoundrel’s daughter? No, he could not; and yet how his pulses bounded at the thought of her – the sweet, shy gladness in her eyes, the soft, thrilling tones in her voice when she spoke his name, the heroism of her conduct in daring to seek his camp in the darkness of night and bring him warning of that diabolical scheme of robbery and murder; the refinement of her manner, and then, too, her knowledge of the English tongue. Where had she acquired these? What would she not be justified in thinking of him if he never came to seek and thank her?